


The Waiting Game

by tea_petty



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Anxiety, Drugs, M/M, Waiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 03:31:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_petty/pseuds/tea_petty
Summary: Waiting is the hardest part and Hancock just can't.





	The Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-petty

Hancock had never been a jittery guy; or maybe he’d always been a jittery guy and had just never known it because the jet did such a good job sweeping that little facet of his personality under the rug. In any case, he was jittery now, or so said the rampant bounce of his knee, and his furtive glances towards the dismal little clock atop the coffee table. 

The little minute and hour hands seemed to be giving him the finger, in perfect, second-by-second mockery. They were just the tip of the iceberg, the pleasant first meeting before one took a nice lookin’ lady friend home and found out she was bat shit crazy. The clock only alluded to the hours he’d spent fretting at his signature spot in the Third Rail’s main room; not of the week he’d spent sleeping alone, kicking up dust in his town, and arguing with the Sole in his head, simultaneously wondering if that version was the only one he’d ever see again.

He looked to the smoke rings rippling out from a few tables away; hoping there might be a sign scattering into the air along with the wisps of nicotine clouds. He looked to the cannister of jet laying in front of him and wondered if maybe there was some sort of answer buried in there; the same old question he’d been asking for years. He already knew, without taking it, that it would procure the same answer, which wasn’t really an answer at all. Finally, he looked again to the clock, each twitch of a hand coinciding with the throb inside his skull. 

Without helping or realizing it, Hancock’s gaze switched to the entrance of the Third Rail before leaping back to the clock - a jitter in its own right. Damn it.

Forgotten off to the side, Fahrenheit reached over to lay a firm hand on Hancock’s knee, pressing it into a subdued state.

“You’re supposed to be Hancock, bad-ass mayor of Goodneighbor, and defender of the freest place in the Commonwealth,” she quipped, eyebrows raised, “but you’re waiting around for him like a damn puppy.”

Hancock shot her a glare.

“Shut up.”

Fahrenheit’s mouth split into a wide grin.

“Hancock and Sole sitting in a tree…” she crooned, and Hancock felt his hand twitch. 

He wasn’t that guy though, especially not to Fahrenheit, and so the motion was more closely akin to that of a rabid dog’s hackles raising, than an actual intention of enacting violence.

“_Down_ boy, I was just teasing you,” his bodyguard reached into the rucksack dropped at her feet and rifled through it. “I know you’re on edge though, so how about you take my peace offering and let me help you take that edge off?”

Fahrenheit must’ve found what she was looking for because Hancock could see a glimmer of triumphant alertness flash in her eyes, before she withdrew her hand and brought the whole bag up to the coffee table. She pushed the ashtray out of the way before turning the bag upside down and letting cannisters of jet tumble to the smooth surface.

The place where Hancock’s brow should have been, raised, and he snubbed his half-finished cigarette out on the sole of his boot.

“Apology accepted.”

That was just a thing people said to get on with it.

He picked up a cannister from the pile and raised the mouthpiece to his lips. His eyes fell shut out of habit as he dragged in a deep breath. The surly stench of shit and a brahmin farm curled at the back of his throat before it was sucked down his windpipe. Somehow, in all his years, all his highs, and through the stench of his own rotting flesh, the smell of jet was something he’d never grow totally immune to. He felt his muscles relax and mind cloud within moments though, and so the putrid smell was a small price to pay for even five minutes of relief.

Based on the increasing haze that fogged his consciousness though, he’d be good for at least a few hours. Fahrenheit always knew where to get the good stuff, and _Christ_; Hancock’s glassy eyes dropped to the countless cannisters of jet remaining on the table – _there was so fucking much_.

It could’ve been that same very long, everlasting canister of jet, or it could’ve been a series of new ones, that Hancock kept polishing off only to immediately forget. All he knew though, was that at some point, when he was super, _super_ high, Fahrenheit had replaced the abundance of jet on the table, with a single stack of playing cards.

Hancock blinked dazedly at her, a slow spreading smile at his face, as sweet as molasses and as far off the ground as the moon was at that very moment.

“Whatcha got there?”

“Cards. Whaddya say we play a round, kill some time?”

Hancock had no bad feelings about this, and if he wasn’t feeling bad, he was good.

He bobbed his head in jerky confirmation and Fahrenheit started to shuffle, lithe fingers playing the cards like they had never been without.

“How about Blackjack?”

“S’all good,” Hancock sighed and in that moment, it really was.

Somewhere through the haze of his high, a pang of alarm waded through the mist, directing his gaze back to the stairs of the Third Rail, searching for a body that wasn’t there. This did not go unnoticed by Fahrenheit.

“Hey Hancock,” she said, seizing his attention once more before he had even noticed anything was amiss. “If you win this round, that means you don’t need to worry about Sole anymore.”

Hancock felt the blow, but it didn’t hurt, and when he sobered up he’d remember that this was exactly why he’d started with the chems in the first place. To be fair, they were the most reliable thing in his life, including himself.

“I’m dealer,” Fahrenheit continued, taking Hancock’s complicit silence as agreement. 

He sure hoped it was.

The next thing the ghoul knew, Fahrenheit had shifted so that she sat across the table from him, and there were two cards in front of each of them. Both of his were face up, a six of hearts and a Jack of clubs, while a two of clubs peeped him from Fahrenheit’s side; the card back of the dealer’s concealed card he noticed, had been scribbled on incoherently with black marker. He’d been staring at it for a few minutes before he realized it was supposed to be a rendition of his own face.

If he hadn’t been nearly tranquilized by his jet dosage, he might have felt it upon himself to be offended.

“What’s your next move?”

“Stay,” Hancock drawled, without even bothering to do the math.

Fahrenheit nodded, before flipping over her mystery card. A bright spot of red leapt into the corner of Hancock’s field of vision – Fahrenheit’s red seven of hearts. She drew from the deck once more, revealing the topmost card to be a four of spades.

“Fourteen to sixteen,” she murmured, “what do you know? Looks like Sole’s going to pull through after all.”

Hancock perked up slightly at the sound of Sole’s name, the rest of Fahrenheit’s words getting jumbled up in his cloudy high. The timbre in her voice suggested news of the positive nature though, and paired with Sole’s name, it was enough to relax the clenched fist around his heart.

He sighed, leisurely now, and reached for another canister; victory was _sweet_.

Sole’s face was floating through Hancock’s mind when the radio on the little table to the couch’s side started blaring. Travis’ voice, grating due to its loudness, was meek in every other way; a bizarre combination if Hancock ever heard one. He watched as the room spun, and Fahrenheit’s face rippled in a myriad of fantastic colors, though perhaps he wasn’t the expert on normal at the moment.

“_Here’s uh…some news. I guess. Unless you guys have heard it before of course,_” the radio giggled nervously in Travis’ voice, then paused for a few moments to compose itself. “_The Commonwealth has no shortage of strange happenings it seems, as rumors of some sort of teleportation device have sparked amongst the Minutemen, Railroad, and Brotherhood. So uh…no good can come from that…? I…don’t think.”_

Even through the heavy tranquility of the jet’s sedation, Hancock felt a pang of irritation. Spit it out already!

“_Other rumors…ah…confirm, or, uh, say, that the vault dweller…is actually involved.”_

Hancock shoved into a more upright position; not alert but fighting the fog of his high at the reference to Sole. 

“Th’fuck,” he grumbled.

Fahrenheit watched him; he might get rowdy. She’d have to coax him back to the State House if he did. It wasn’t good for business if Goodneighbor’s fearless leader flew off the hinges, after all.

“_Reports continue with eyewitnesses accounts that speak of a bright flash of light, before a figure – uh, the vault dweller I guess – disappeared beneath it,” _the radio warbled on, and Magnolia’s song seemed to reach its peak, as more of Travis’ balking was covered by the sharp rap of a snare drum. “_I uh…I’m um, no expert, but, um, I don’t think…I really don’t think anyone could’ve survived that.”_

The movement in Hancock’s arm was automatic then; he was so far gone he couldn’t even feel the flash of anger until it was already ebbing away, his arm already having flung the jet against the table. Fahrenheit shifted in her seat, deliberating, before keeping her hands decidedly off the mayor, and instead turning to switch the radio off, cutting Travis off as he started to introduce a song by the Ink Spots.

“Don’t listen to him,” Fahrenheit turned to Hancock, “kid wouldn’t know real news if it punched him in the face. And trust me; most everything that can, already has.”

That was just a thing people said in the Commonwealth.

So that’s what it came down to, Hancock decided glumly; who did he trust more, some yellow-bellied, sorry kid, or a streak of luck playing cards? Anger flared in him, but it could’t push through the immensity of jet coursing through the ghoul’s system then and there, so it fizzled out into sadness, bile souring and stagnating – the perfect potency for Hancock to wallow in. Or else, it would be once he got some whiskey in him to sweeten up the concoction. 

Hancock shoved up from the couch, swaying precariously on his feet, but managing to dance just out of Fahrenheit’s reach, before he _shlucked_ over to the bar. The only thing that kept him from bumping into the throngs of people he passed, was his status as mayor, and everyone’s knowledge that at times like this, he was not to be provoked or disturbed in the slightest.

Hancock may have been too high to walk in a straight line like this, but he could still sure as shit stab a man in the kidney with impeccable precision.

He slumped against the unoccupied length of the counter, missing the bar stool the first time he tried to mount it. A patron on the other side used his heel to discretely nudge the bar stool towards the worry-stricken ghoul a few inches, before turning back to his own drink as he saw the mayor successfully seat himself.

“Oi, Hancock, mate you don’t look so good. Fancy a glass of water?” Charlie whirred over, one mechanical arm wiping the inside of a recently used glass with a grimy towel.

“None of that now,” Hancock rasped, his head lolling slightly as a hiccup shook him. He paused, the jerky little motion of his body seeming sufficient to scramble his short-term memory.

“A drink then?” Charlie suggested. He knew better than to try and dry Hancock out himself. If the man wanted to stay tossed, he’d certainly do that – as was well within his rights.

“Yeah, yeah, a drink.”

“The usual?”

“_You_ betcha.”

The first word was dragged out as Hancock deliberated on the second, a process that took a staggering five seconds.

As Hancock waited for Charlie to return with his drink, a figure loomed in his peripheral vision, sliding up onto the barstool beside him. 

The broadness of the figure, and firmness of the movements told Hancock that the person beside him was probably a man. There was that pregnant sort of moment, full of expectation, and decision in which Hancock felt the man give him a once-over and would or wouldn’t proceed to broach a conversation. 

The man’s stare prickled Hancock’s leathery skin, as if the nerve endings still had enough juice to squeeze out this last, unpleasant sensation.

“Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

Most of the events since his high had settled in, had gotten caught in the fog of it; silly little flies in the spider’s web, but this voice, it struck Hancock, a lightening bolt to the chest.

He turned, his brow deeply furrowed, dark eyes shining.

“Hey…”

“Hey yourself,” Sole grinned a toothy grin.

This face wasn’t quite as Hancock remembered. This face was more colorful than the ghoul remembered, reddened with dried blood and blotched in blue. If Hancock searched the smile closely, he could glimpse a split lip and a chipped tooth too, but it was the face he’d seen in his dreams every night since its disappearance all the same.

“Sole,”

Hancock’s answering smile was wobbly, his voice threadbare.

“What, you thought I’d forget about you?” 

If Hancock had been sober, he might’ve caught the tremor in Sole’s voice too, instead it glanced off his back like water on duck feathers.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Hancock couldn’t remember when it happened, but suddenly he looked down and Sole was gripping his hand. Sole gave it a meaningful squeeze.

“I would never.”

“What matters is that you’re here now.”

It was just a thing people said, but this time, Hancock meant it.


End file.
